Description

Mary Beard's richly illustrated work is a testament to the profound importance of the triumph in Roman culture - and for monarchs, dynasts and generals ever since. But how can we re-create the ceremony as it was celebrated in Rome? How can we piece together its elusive traces in art and literature? Beard addresses these questions, opening a window on the intriguing process of sifting through and making sense of what constitutes 'history'.show more

Review quote

"Conjectures and conclusions grow from and around the triumphus like kudzu. It takes the mighty vorpal sword of Mary Beard to clear a path through this jabberwocky jungle, snicker-snack. She stands in the great tradition of myth-puncturing Latin classicists - scholars like Richard Bentley, Basil Gildersleeve, A. E. Housman. or Ronald Syme - when she points out that almost all the established views on the triumph are dubious or plain wrong... Her prose, for all its learning, is jaunty. Her book is, in short, a triumph." - Garry Wills, New York Review of Books "A book that manages to be simultaneously both brilliantly subtle and splendidly swaggering." - Tom Holland, Sunday Times"show more

About Mary Beard

Mary Beard has a Chair of Classics at Cambridge and is a Fellow of Newnham College. She is classics editor of The Times Literary Supplement and author of the blog "A Don's Life." Her many books include The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found and The Parthenon (both from Harvard).show more